


Of Good Men and Great

by Lucy



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, BAMF Lestrade, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:14:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy/pseuds/Lucy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Moran kidnaps three men to lure Sherlock Holmes out of hiding. What happens during the next three days changes all of them, permanently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Good Men and Great

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the kink meme, but I've taken bits from several different prompts, and I'm not really satisfying any one of them. This is very much a Lestrade story first and foremost. It deals with recovery after extended physical (Lestrade) and psychological (all of them) torture, most of which will happen off-screen but all of which might be described in detail at some point, so. Take heed. It's also slash. Eventually.

_The hero is the man who does the thing—does his work—carries the message._

  * _Elbert Hubbard_




* * *

 

Of course there were drills for this sort of thing, protocols in place, contingency plans established. The possibility of it happening had always been present.

Still, when Mycroft was conscious enough to realise that he was bound, sitting upright in a hard-backed chair with arms and legs tightly roped to the sturdy wood, his first thought was, _me? They must be mad._

His head ached, his memory was spotty. He stayed aware of himself enough to know not to open his eyes or announce his return to consciousness right away. He needed time to take stock, to sort out what he was dealing with.

The air was cool and draughty, speaking to a wide room around him. The chair was tall, high-backed, and very sturdy. The ropes were wound from wrist to elbow, from knee to ankle, completely prohibiting movement of the limbs. They weren't exceptionally tight, evidenced by the fact that he could still feel his fingers and toes.

The sounds of breathing reached his ears. Close but not right on top of him. Two sets, one slow and rhythmic, the other strong but uneven. Someone awake, someone asleep. The air smelled of dust and plaster, chalk, stale with age. Mycroft was still fully clothed, his Italian loafers scratching faintly against a hard floor. Cement, he thought.

He made a guess: a classroom of some kind, emptied out, and in disrepair. An abandoned schoolhouse, boarded up and forgotten about. Himself and two other hostages. Perhaps Anthea, perhaps his driver, perhaps some of his security force. It was early in the afternoon, judging from the pale light he could feel from one side – a window, the source of the draught.

He couldn't tell much more with his eyes closed. His head was spinning a bit, empty-feeling, and that might have put him off his game a bit. But there was no sound of movement around him, no shifting of weight or sighing of a bored guard. No immediate sign of danger.

Well, nothing for it. He lifted his head all at once, blinking his eyes open and looking around.

He'd been right and wrong. Obviously a schoolhouse, obviously abandoned.

But the other two men tied to similar chairs were distinctly _not_ a part of his security team.

“Mycroft.” The one who sat awake nodded at him, terse and sharp.

“John.” Mycroft recognised the second man, the sleeper, though it had been months since he had laid eyes on him. “And the Inspector. How pleasant.”

“Glad you think so.” John kept watching him, sitting stiffly in ropes that bound him just as Mycroft's did.

Honestly, Mycroft didn't think it was pleasant. Not a thing about it. Himself, John Watson, Greg Lestrade. It was the worst possible thing he might have woken up to, because the three of them only had one thing in common.

“Didn't think a man like you could get kidnapped,” John said into the silence. He went from looking at Mycroft to sneaking quick looks around, at Lestrade, at a plain door that sat closed and silent beside a cracked and dust-white chalkboard.

“It doesn't inspire confidence, I admit,” Mycroft answered calmly, his thoughts whipping fast from recognition to conclusion.

If this was to do with Sherlock then Sherlock was close to the end of his goal. Close to coming home. Good news in itself, but bad for the current situation. The men Sherlock was after were ruthless, violent, sadistic, and they must have known the noose was tightening around their necks if they were coming after Sherlock's friends. They would be desperate. Their network was splintered around them.

Moriarty had been truly brilliant, his tendrils spreading over six continents. His criminal empire ran like a business, a multinational corporation. But who was left? No one, really, compared to how many there had been only a year ago. A few on the Russian side, an as-yes-unnamed advisor who funnelled money out of Dubai. Sherlock had been dealing with the Brazilians last Mycroft had heard from him. 

Moran.

Mycroft could only hope it was the Russians.

“So what happens now?” John asked suddenly, his voice pitched loud. Annoyed, Mycroft guessed. Out of practice. It had been over a year since his last kidnapping, he seemed to have lost the taste for it.

Mycroft looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“I mean, with you,” John's hand flapped against the arm of his chair, and he frowned down at it in annoyance. “Will a sniper take you out the minute someone comes along to ask questions? Is there cyanide in one of your fillings? Don't you 'know too much' or something like that?”

“I've always admired your imagination, doctor,” Mycroft answered with a thin smile. “But no; though your concern is appreciated my death is not inevitable.” He didn't bother to add that if his theory was right – and it was – the people who had brought them to this place would have no interest in questioning any of them.

Besides, jobs like his had outgrown the need for quick deaths under threat of torture. There was no one alive today who knew enough to be that dangerous. Mycroft came close, but even his knowledge was meaningless on its own. Mycroft knew who to go to about everything, but he didn't know everything. There was always a code to be entered, a password to be given, a person waiting on the other end to complete a process. No one since Cold War days was an island unto himself. Mycroft's singular speciality was being indispensable, in being the one person who knew where every piece of information vital to the function of the government could be found, quickly. His power was in knowledge, but not the kind of knowledge that could be tortured out of him.

“Would you stop that?”

He looked over at the doctor.

John was scowling, pale and worried and using anger to cover it. “Stop crawling around inside your head long enough to tell me what the hell is going on here. Christ, you're as bad as...” He trailed off, lips pressing together tightly. “What is all this?”

“I don't know. I take it you haven't seen our captors yet?”

“No. I woke up five minutes before you did, give or take.” John's eyes went to Lestrade, who was still unconscious. “But you have some idea. You're Mycroft Holmes, you always know _something._ ”

“I have theories,” Mycroft answered mildly. “Nothing worth mentioning quite yet.”

John seemed to physically have to swallow down his initial response to that. He glared from his chair, but tilted his head back, drew in a breath and let it out.

“Is it to do with...”

“With?”

“Look at us, look at who's here. You, me, Lestrade. Is it Sherlock?”

Mycroft's mouth opened and shut, the very picture of startled confusion. “There's a number of things wrong with that--”

“I don't mean it's Sherlock himself.” John breathed in and out, deep, on the edge of losing composure. “Something to do with him. Something he did, someone he went after?”

Mycroft's head was starting to ache, and the back of his throat had an unpleasant chemical tang. He'd been drugged, then, to get him into that room, and was probably dehydrated from it. He sighed.

And then he surprised both of them by answering honestly. “Yes. I expect it very much is about Sherlock.”

“Not your most impressive leap of logic, Iceman, but correct.”

Mycroft and John both looked over at the new voice, the creak of the door opening, the crunch of plaster flakes under heavy booted feet. Mycroft's eyes shut for just a moment when he saw the new arrival.

Damn.

Sebastian Moran. The only person in all of Jim Moriarty's network who scared Mycroft as much as Moriarty had. The two men had been opposites in a lot of ways, unlikely partners, but what counted was that they were equally sadistic, and equally pitiless.

Moran was Slavic in origin, though his voice was flat and Americanized. He was tall and sturdily built, close cropped blond hair and pale grey eyes the colour of London skies during winter. He was cold inside and out, from everything Mycroft knew about him. If Moriarty was a giggling madman, Moran was a soldier who never left war behind. But Moran had been Moriarty's faithful second in command for years.

And now he was a guard dog without a master. A soldier left without orders, watching the war being lost all around him.

It was...concerning.

Moran moved into the room, surveying the three chairs and the men inside them. He left behind two men, uniformed in generic camouflage and standing on either side of the open door watching silently.

“We couldn't get the old lady,” Moran mentioned, approaching Mycroft's chair and stooping a bit to study him. “Though I admit I didn't try very hard. You've got Baker Street sewn up tight, and there were easier targets. Like you. Mycroft Holmes, the Government Himself. Easier to grab than a feeble old lady.”

John snorted softly off to the side, and if it were anyone but Moran looking at him Mycroft would have sent him an amused smile in response. Poor Mrs. Hudson was doomed to be underestimated by lesser men.

If Moran heard the snort he ignored it. His eyes were crags of stone locked on Mycroft's face. “You know why I've brought you here, don't you?”

Mycroft gazed back at him calmly.

“I'm not going to ask you where he is, because I expect even you don't know from day to day. So we're just going to have to wait for him to find us. I've put the word out that you're all here with me. How long do you think it will take him?”

Too long, Mycroft thought in response. In Brazil, last Mycroft had checked. On the road, always calling from different numbers and different places. It might take a message weeks to find him.

“How long will it take _who_?”

Mycroft didn't look at John, but his mouth thinned. Sherlock wouldn't be happy that Sebastian Moran of all people broke the news this way.

But Moran just smiled at Mycroft, ice cold, ignoring John. “In the meantime, we're all stuck here. We'll have to get to know each other.”

Little cold tendrils of fear were starting to work their way up Mycroft's body, though he gave no sign of it.

“His closest friends. His inner circle. All alive and well. That can't be allowed to continue, Mr. Holmes. Not when he has crushed my inner circle so thoroughly.”

“Mycroft...” John sounded hoarse.

Moran did acknowledge him then, straightening and turning where he stood. “John Watson.”

It got those cold eyes off of Mycroft, but he couldn't begin to relax.

“You...you confused a hell of a lot of people, doc. No one knew anything about you at first, you were just the roommate. Then the blogger, then the _partner_. Of course there was a lot of talk about what else you were, but anyone speculating on your sex life missed the truly amazing thing about you: he _liked_ you. As long as my organization had him under watch, that was a first. No one expected it. And a lot of us wondered why. Who the hell was John Watson to earn something like that?”

Moran sent a quicker look to Lestrade, who by all appearances was still unconscious. “Lestrade we understood. He was just a different kind of pusher for our dear boy. He offered a badly-needed service. But you. No one could figure you out. They still don't understand it.”

Moran turned back to Mycroft with a thin smile. “And you. The estranged, despised brother. Most of us bought that, bought it for years. Jimmy had no doubt that you two hated each other. It wasn't until the last few weeks that I started seeing the problem there. Because for him to be alive and destroying us one by one, he had to have help. He could never have tricked the world into thinking he was dead and then escaped without a trace. Not on his own. Not without the kind of help that only you could have given him. You were good, both of you, to keep our eyes off of you for so long. A cover story built over the course of a lifetime together. The hardest lie to crack.”

Mycroft nodded a bit in acknowledgement, though he didn't bother answering. Nothing about he and his brother's relationship was a lie. It was just _more,_ more than anyone ever saw of it.

Moran drew in a breath and sighed it out, gazing over them all. “He's destroyed everything I ever worked for,” he said, voice almost casual. “Jimmy is dead. A lot of people are dead. Strong, brilliant people. And you are the men he relies on. You.” He shook his head, laughing, strained. “You just don't look like all that much, you three. But that's the really exciting thing about us all being trapped here together, waiting. I get a chance to find out what you're really made of.”

Moran liked games, Mycroft's mind supplied against his wishes. He left behind survivors now and then, but never as whole people. He liked pain, he liked mind games, and he liked to watch, to listen. He was fascinated by suffering. Depraved childhood full of abuse, the file on him read in parts, but that was mostly psychologists guessing. The reason for a man's depravity didn't really matter when it was right in front of a person. Moran had survived a lot of pain, and had in the midst of it lost all compassion for anyone else in pain.

“I just need to figure out how to handle you. Sherlock Holmes' support system: I'll be incredibly disappointed if you're not the toughest nuts I've ever had to crack.” He looked them over one by one – John, round-faced and glaring in his fuzzy jumper; Lestrade, looking grey and worn with his head still slumped forward; and Mycroft, the upright and prim backbone of a Nation.

Moran chuckled. “I'm braced for that disappointment already.” He approached Mycroft again. He reached out his hand, and it was all Mycroft could do not to draw back when calloused fingers came to rest in his hair.

Mycroft kept his eyes on Moran, feeling the weight of that hand on his head. He fought to breathe normally. No use getting too worked up too fast.

“There are so many things we could do,” Moran said, his voice quiet. Personal. Intimate. “If it was just you and me, brother dear, I know what I'd pick. I know just what would break you into pretty little shards.”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, cool and calm. Or at least doing everything in his power to appear that way. This was beyond his experience. He couldn't predict it, couldn't predict what he himself would do in the face of it.

Moran sighed and his fingers slipped down, skimming Mycroft's cheek before dropping to his side. “But that would be a waste,” he said, turning around.

Mycroft let out a breath, unsteady. On the other side of Moran John was watching him, his face utterly unreadable.

“I can't leave anyone out, that wouldn't be fair. No, I think this calls for a special game.” He sauntered over to John, studying him.

John's spine straightened in his chair, his jaw squaring and his gaze heated. Much, much stronger than he looked. Mycroft knew that about John, from reading it in his records and from seeing it – if from a distance – during the time John worked with Sherlock. John had a weary, earnest look to him. As easy to underestimate as Martha Hudson, in his own way. But he was strong.

“Have you ever watched wrestling, doc?” Moran sounded like he was smiling. “Not the real thing, the costume drama the Americans love so much.”

John frowned, brow furrowing.

“There's a particular kind of match, they call it tag-team. Two men on a team. One from each side starts the bout, and when either of them has had enough, they tag their partner, and he comes in fresh.”

John's frown stayed in place, though his brow had smoothed and his face was losing colour.

Moran smiled. “It's a test of fortitude, and selfishness, and, like all my games, it's about pain. One team, three men. We start the match. And when you've had enough, you tag out, and one of your teammates takes over. You end your suffering and you begin theirs. It's elegant...well, sort of.” He glanced back at Mycroft, his smile now a grin. “It's fun, anyway. What do you think, Iceman?”

Mycroft just looked back at him.

Moran laughed, soft and cruel. “Your mask is slipping. There's fear all over you. Tell you what, me and my boys are going to take off for a bit and give you a chance to talk it out, decide who the starter for your team is. Five minutes. Choose wisely – I'll be disappointed if the first round doesn't last a good hour. And, honestly, I get kinda mean when I'm disappointed.”

Mycroft's eyes stayed on Moran as he turned and headed for the door. The two uniformed men followed him out, and the door shut with barely a click. It probably didn't even lock. Prisoners in an unlocked room.

“Sherlock is alive.”

He looked over at John, and sighed. “It's complicated.”

“No it's not. He's alive or he's dead.”

They were probably being monitored somehow, but Mycroft didn't see any need to prevaricate. This move that Moran was playing, it was endgame. Too big and final to be part of an ongoing strategy. Endgame meant that the time for secrecy was done with.

“He's alive,” he said simply.

John let out a breath. He looked upwards, his throat working. “Right. All right. Well.”

“I don't know where he is. I don't know how long it will take him to hear about all this. It might be...a while.”

“That's fine. We'll...it's...” John swallowed. “Alive.”

Mycroft almost wanted to smile.

But the door opened before he could. “All right, that was closer to one minute than five, I know. But I'm eager. I haven't been this excited for a game in months.” Moran moved in, and instead of two men there were four behind him, all grim-faced and square-jawed. Career soldiers, Mycroft thought, but for whose army he couldn't have begun to imagine.

“You did make a decision, didn't you? I can't imagine friends of the great Sherlock Holmes would be indecisive.”

Mycroft and John exchanged a quick, grim glance. John's shoulders squared and he nodded once. Confident, certain, as if the news about Sherlock had made him invulnerable. He was every bit an ex-soldier in that moment, facing the likelihood of pain with stoic eyes.

Mycroft couldn't help a small shiver, and he wasn't sure if it was selfish relief or pure fear.

“Well, boys? Who will it be?”

John faced Moran with steel in his eyes, but he didn't get a chance to say anything.

Because at that moment, in the forgotten-about third chair, Lestrade's head lifted from its slump. He looked right at Moran and spoke clearly, wide awake. “Me.”


End file.
